Upcoming SDK changes / improvements
This is a quick summary of changes in development for the Primal Carnage Extinction SDK...
We remain continually impressed at the creations people have made with the development toolkit and are looking forward to adding more robust support for custom map making in a future update. You have our apologies for how long this feature has taken, but it is definitely on track for this summer.
The next SDK patch will include some of the content optimizations we've been making. A big one is removing over a hundred unique shader materials and replacing them with more efficient instanced versions. This will have both positive and potentially negative effects to SDK users.
Firstly, this should bring performance improvements and cut loading times down a bit, since there is less for the editor to compile on startup and fewer shaders for the graphics card to worry about.
Secondly, if you have applied different materials to static meshes placed in your levels, they may no longer exist in their old format. If this is the case, you will see an error message upon opening your map that lists the missing materials. It is recommended to take a printscreen or note down the missing assets, since if you save the map after opening it with blanked materials the error list will not show again. You can then search for the new instanced MI_ versions of the old materials to replace anything that is missing.
We will likely be continuing this process over time (reducing the number of custom shaders in use to free up graphics memory) so you may run into the same issue further down the line.
On a similar topic, we still intend to modify our SDK release process to pre-compile shaders before sending out a new version. This step will remove extreme loading times for some users, but we cannot guarantee when this change will occur. It may be some time before we can set aside coding resources to implement.
Additionally, with the next SDK update there will be a couple of new features available to skin makers. The diffuse overlay system used for dinosaur skins has been extended to weapon skins for ease of use, as an alternative to the camouflage system. You will also be able to submit custom overlays for human arms, with "blank bases" of all the human arm textures included in their character packages.
That's all for now. Keep an eye out for further updates on modding support and watch for the new update which should be released later this month!
We remain continually impressed at the creations people have made with the development toolkit and are looking forward to adding more robust support for custom map making in a future update. You have our apologies for how long this feature has taken, but it is definitely on track for this summer.
The next SDK patch will include some of the content optimizations we've been making. A big one is removing over a hundred unique shader materials and replacing them with more efficient instanced versions. This will have both positive and potentially negative effects to SDK users.
Firstly, this should bring performance improvements and cut loading times down a bit, since there is less for the editor to compile on startup and fewer shaders for the graphics card to worry about.
Secondly, if you have applied different materials to static meshes placed in your levels, they may no longer exist in their old format. If this is the case, you will see an error message upon opening your map that lists the missing materials. It is recommended to take a printscreen or note down the missing assets, since if you save the map after opening it with blanked materials the error list will not show again. You can then search for the new instanced MI_ versions of the old materials to replace anything that is missing.
We will likely be continuing this process over time (reducing the number of custom shaders in use to free up graphics memory) so you may run into the same issue further down the line.
On a similar topic, we still intend to modify our SDK release process to pre-compile shaders before sending out a new version. This step will remove extreme loading times for some users, but we cannot guarantee when this change will occur. It may be some time before we can set aside coding resources to implement.
Additionally, with the next SDK update there will be a couple of new features available to skin makers. The diffuse overlay system used for dinosaur skins has been extended to weapon skins for ease of use, as an alternative to the camouflage system. You will also be able to submit custom overlays for human arms, with "blank bases" of all the human arm textures included in their character packages.
That's all for now. Keep an eye out for further updates on modding support and watch for the new update which should be released later this month!